1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to a vehicle lighting apparatus, which is disposed near an upper end edge of a license plate, having a license plate lamp and an infrared irradiation lamp.
2. Related Art
A related art license plate lamp, which is disposed near an upper end edge of the license plate, illuminates a license plate on a rear side of a vehicle with visible light.
A related art lane mark irradiating lamp, which is an infrared irradiation lamp, irradiates an obliquely rear region of a road surface behind the vehicle with infrared light. While being irradiated with the infrared light, an image of the road surface behind the vehicle is captured by an infrared camera and is displayed on a monitor. Thus, lane marks (e.g., right and left white lines extending along the lane on which the vehicle is running) can be recognized. This may be used for an automatic driving control of the vehicle.
Generally, these license plate lamp and lane mark irradiating lamp are separately provided in a rear part of the vehicle.
A related art lighting apparatus includes a license plate lamp and a back monitoring lamp, which are both arranged near an upper end edge of a license plate (see, e.g., JP 2007-145048 A). This back monitoring lamp is also an infrared irradiation lamp, but is different from the lane mark irradiating lamp in that, for example, it irradiates a wider range of a road surface behind the vehicle with infrared light.
If the back monitoring lamp is replaced with a lane mark irradiating lamp in the related art lighting apparatus described above, the license plate lamp and the lane mark irradiating lamp will be disposed near the upper end edge of the license plate so as to be configured as a single lighting apparatus.
However, if the back monitoring lamp is simply replaced with a lane mark irradiating lamp in the related art lighting apparatus described above, following problems will occur.
The back monitoring lamp is turned on when capturing an image of the road surface behind the vehicle with an infrared camera during a backing movement of the vehicle. In contrast, the lane mark irradiating lamp is continuously turned on during the night time, for example, to execute an automatic driving control. The lane mark irradiating lamp uses near-infrared light. Thus, irradiation light of the lane mark irradiating lamp partially contains red light. Accordingly, when the lane mark irradiating lamp is turned on during the night time and is seen from behind the vehicle, the lane mark irradiating lamp looks reddish. This gives a strange feeling to drivers of vehicles following behind.
During the night time, the license plate lamp is also continuously turned on. Therefore, if the lane mark irradiating lamp is disposed adjacently below the license plate lamp, the light from the license plate lamp can effectively suppress the lane mark irradiating lamp from looking reddish.
However, in the related art lighting apparatus described above, the back monitoring lamp is configured such that a lens is disposed to control the infrared light emitting from a backwardly facing light emitting device. Thus, if the license plate lamp is disposed adjacently above the back monitoring lamp, the light from the license plate lamp will partially be blocked or becomes uncontrollable due to the light emitting device and the lens of the back monitoring lamp. Therefore, in the related art lighting apparatus described above, the license plate lamp and the back monitoring lamp are spaced from each other in a widthwise direction of the vehicle.
Accordingly, if the back monitoring lamp is simply replaced with a lane mark irradiating lamp in the related art lighting apparatus, there will a problem that the light from the license plate lamp cannot be utilized to suppress the lane mark irradiating lamp from looking reddish.